


It could be worse

by Runespoor



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jason was mentored by another costumed crimefighter, and one time it wasn't a crimefighter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It could be worse

**Author's Note:**

> No character bashing.

1\. 

Jim brought the kid back home. Social Services wouldn't be able to pick him up before two or three days, depending how long it'd take them to straighten things out after Two-Face's attack on City Hall, and Jim was not going to let a thirteen-year old sleep in a shared cell with an adult convict.

He locked the entrance door before going to bed, going full well that if he didn't in the morning the boy would be gone.

What Jim doesn't know is that Jason tried to run anyway, that night, but Barbara caught him sneaking out of the window when she was coming home after patrol.

 

2\. 

Jason's a city boy. Always has been. His survival skills are specifically adapted to the urban habitat.

So it only takes him a few months to accept that yeah, Gotham's a shit-hole, and if he stays there, on his own he's just gonna get himself killed. 

Greyhounds can take him wherever he wants, and it so happens that what he wants is _the city_ , just one that won't eat him alive. He remembers just enough from school to know that "metropolis" is a really fucking big city, so that's where he goes.

He does what he does best. He survives. Metropolis is beautiful and glittering, but it's still a city, which means that someone with Jason's highly specialized skills does just fine. Picking pockets isn't noticeably different from Gotham to Metropolis, and Jason's both deft and fast.

So maybe he grows smug, or complacent, or something, because one day he's working his magic on a guy - the huge but hunched over kind, like he's saying sorry for being so much taller and wider in the shoulders than everyone else in the room, in every room - and the guy just-- reaches over when he shouldn't even have _felt_ anything, and _catches_ Jason's wrist.

All of a sudden Jason's in trouble. 'Cause the guy? Really huge, and the subway's crowded, and he's looking at Jason with a very severe look behind those glasses of his. 

Jason doesn't get to try out his newest sob story on the cops, though. The guy doesn't even rough him up - that happens sometimes, guys thinking punk kids ought to be taught a lesson, straighten em out but no need to involve the cops over some issue of boys being boys, which works for Jason - just opens his wallet and hands Jason his card.

"The newspaper is always looking for people. You look like a smart kid; if you decide you're interested, ask for Clark Kent. I might be able to get you in."

Jason's not sure what to think of it, but whatever. It can't hurt to have a look.

 

3\. 

Ms Bertinelli doesn't take shit from anyone. She makes that clear about two minutes into her first class, when she tells Val and Sophia that they can stop chatting or get out. So. She's a hardass.

That chaps Jason's ass good. Mom's sick and he sure as hell doesn't have any time for schoolwork today, if he ever did. Finding ways to find money is becoming a bit of a priority. 

Jason misses a lot of school. More and more as the school year goes by and Mom's not getting any better and they _need money_ and he can't believe he ever worried about turning papers in late. He doesn't worry about turning up at school at all nowadays. 

Teachers try to help. They take him aside, Ms Bertinelli like the others, and ask if everything's all right at home. Sure. Like Jason's gonna tell that he's taking care of his mom more than she's taking care of him now. All they'd do about it is call CPS on their asses.

He's angry and he lashes at them, if he lets them they'll take him away, he's already lost his Dad to the state and jail, he's _not_ losing his mum too. He doesn't give a fuck about schoolwork and he can't tell anyone about his mom. 

After a while, they stop trying reaching out to him. That makes it easier. He doesn't give a fuck about schoolwork and he barely shows up anymore, too much of a risk. 

They haven't called CPS yet; he doesn't want to remind them he exists.

No more school means more time to find money, which is often illegal but Jason cares about _that_ about as much as does about the English assignments he never completed. More money means that they reach an equilibrium. 

For a while there, Jason thinks they're gonna be alright. Mom's very, very weak, but he gets her her meds. She just needs time, and now he knows how to find money, they have as much of that as they need. Yeah, they'll pull through. For two or three weeks, Jason has hope. Contentment.

Jason's Mom dies in March, when the sun starts shining again.

Jason gets a little careless after that, careless enough that he tangles with a cape. He was just helping out some organized guys who were moving crates of stuff Jason's just as happy not knowing the contents, and everything went to hell.

At first, Jason didn't know she was there; he was outside, keeping an eye out for the cops. Supposedly looking out for the Bat, too, but he didn't believe in the Big Bad Batman. The guys he was working for did, so he kept his eyeroll to himself. Maybe that was why he didn't hear her at first. He wasn't watching out for a cape.

Then it started getting loud, back there, muffled sounds of-- people fighting, crashing into crates, and Jason headed there so see what the hell was going on. (Looking back, it's easy to call himself a moron, but truth is, he didn't have any reason to run the other way. There'd been no gunshots.)

She was standing over one of the guys, arm pulled back and poised to punch like if she'd have no problem making his head loll back the other way if he didn't answer. The others were already on the ground, out cold. She was just a dark shape, like the insides of the warehouse had spit some demon out - Jason knows how it sounds. In that moment he knew why these guys were scared of Batman, too.

As she heard him coming she turned her head toward him, and froze. 

She was wearing a mask, and a cape, and Jason didn't waste one second running away.

The next morning, Ms Bertinelli rings his doorbell.

He tries to pretend he's fine, but she doesn't take shit from anyone. 

_(She bulldozes over CPS' maze of rules and forms like they were seventh graders whining about too much homework, and she's named as his legal guardian. He doesn't get to skip school,_ ever _, but that's the cause of less fights than what he wants to do at night. Jason's not so sure about her being a teacher, but it's really cool that she's the Huntress.)_

 

4\. 

"I thought Lanterns didn't have sidekicks," is what comes out of Batgirl's mouth the first time she sees him.

Jason represses the urge to roll his eyes, as the mask makes it pointless, and retorts, "I thought Bats were well-informed. Guess we've both been had, huh?"

Her eyes narrow behind her mask, just a moment, then she must have made up her mind it's not worth it and to let it go, and shrugs. 

"So what's your name? Lantern Junior? Neon Boy? Nightlight?"

He snorts. "Do I look like a Vegas stripper to you?"

The corners of her mouth quirk. "Okay, no. Just making sure. You know how it is..."

Boy, does he ever. He guesses it's even worse in the crowd she runs with; Alan's given him the spiel about it. 

A pretty strict spiel, actually, more so than the one about Superman. Maybe because the one about Superman had to wait until after he'd met the man, superheroes emergencies being what they are. Maybe because Batman doesn't have the Boy Scout rep Superman has. Maybe because Alan's from Gotham, and he hasn't been there in years, but he still has an attachment to the city he doesn't have for many other places, and he doesn't want his children to look bad in front of the home crew. 

Some days Jason thinks that's why Alan adopted him. They're both originally from Gotham, both estranged from it, both still care about it. And neither particularly wants to go back.

Still, whatever Alan says, Jason's got opinions of his own about the Bat crew. _Nightwing_ , for fuck's sake.

"Sure," he just says. Antagonizing the cute blond who leads the Titans when Wonder Girl can't is not in his plans. "You can just call me Jason."

Her eyebrows raise again. "Secret identity? Seriously?"

"We're not big on secret identities. My sister's skin is green," he explains off Batgirl's look. 

"Right." She takes it in stride, but he can see she's still a bit perplexed. 

Jason's so glad he's never had to grow up with that kind of obligations.

 

5\. 

The clocktower is the kind of place that would never have allowed an obvious street punk like Jason in before No Man's Land; but to be fair, it's also the kind of place that he wouldn't have tried too hard to enter, either. He liked to do his business in the street, because that meant he has that much more control over his surroundings.

No Man's Land's changed a lot of this. For instance, disbanded and decimated Jason's crew. 

“I'm not pissed at them,” he tells Barbara. “It's their life. Can't blame them for getting out while they still could.”

“If you really feel that way, why didn't you leave?” That question sounds very pointed, and Jason is guessing there are fucktons of backstory he's not privy to, there. That's the only way he can make sense of it. He's noticed this about Barbara; she gets vindictive about the most random things.

He shrugs. “Didn't have anywhere else to go. Plus, someone had to stay.”

“To keep the wolves out?” 

She'll never tell him why she's angry, but someday he'll probably have enough pieces of the puzzle to have a clue what the fuck has got Babs's panties in such a twist. Because Jason knows a lot about running on pure rage, and that looks a lot like what Babs has been doing since he met her. Probably what she's been doing since the beginning of No Man's Land. He didn't know her back then, but that'd only make sense. 

“I guess.”

In the beginning, Jason used to think it'd be that way for him, too. 

He'd been mad for so long, at everything, and then the Senate went and proved that they couldn't give a fuck about the poor schmucks of Gotham and threw them into NML... He thought the anger would last forever; burn until there was nothing left to burn, until he was nothing but anger. 

It didn't, though. 

It evaporated. It was like, surviving, getting organized, joining Babs' web of informants, that absorbed all of Jason's wrath. Well, not all. 

He's still angry, when he thinks about Gotham and NML. Still _furious_. But it's not-- it's not all the time any more. He can breathe, now. He can look at the crisp winter sky and stride down devastated streets without that vortex roiling inside him.

It doesn't look to be quite like that for Barbara. She's gotta be too focused for the all-encompassing acid that'd been eating at Jason. But she's definitely pissed, and it's not just at the Senate.

And now they're philosophizing around mugs of hot water – and Jason doesn't mean that like he'd have said 'hot water' to mean tea before NML, because he used to hate tea, thought it tasted like water, but now he means actual hot water. It's amazing what dire privations will do to your personal habits; he loves it.

She doesn't finish her water in one go, which is common sense, the longer you make it last the longer the mug can keep your fingers warm, but when she brings her mug down the set of her eyes mean business.

“Okay, time for you to go out and scare people into not slaughtering one another.”

“Inspire them,” Jason corrects, after he's swallowed the second half of his drink in one gulp. Barbara won't wait. “I'm promising them I'm here to protect them.”

She shoots him a look over her glasses. “If you say so. Just go be Batman for a couple hours.”

Yeah, _fucktons of backstory_. It doesn't matter: Jason's got theories about how Barbara, insanely hot redhead, knows Batman, who once had a partner who was an insanely hot redhead, but the fact of the matter is that Gotham needs a Batman and Jason's grateful he can do something about it.

 

6\. 

For every smile Starfire sends his way, there's at least three more suspicious glances. And he's not counting Gar's glares. He's almost started to wonder whether his face got stuck that way.

All in all, Titans Tower is not the most welcoming place ever.

It's better than the alternative, though. Jason's been thinking about it; there aren't that many alternatives for a teenage reformed costumed criminal. (“Reformed”. If he had a penny for every time he used that word in the past month, he'd be able to move out and pay a rent.) 

There's prison if Jason 'falls off the wagon' – Arsenal's expression fast adopted by the Titans – and nothing for him in the civilian world. Jason would much rather be a Titan.

Slade used to tell him about the Titans. Even when he started fighting the Titans again, even when he started bringing Jason along, he'd tell him about the Titans.

“They're good kids,” he'd say. “And they fight well. As a team. It'd be easier to defeat the Justice League than the Titans – don't snort, kid, I'm serious.”

So far Jason's kept that for himself. He can't imagine Deathstroke's respect for the Titans would make them trust him any faster. 

In fact, he'd put money on the opposite. So he keeps it behind his teeth and smiles like he doesn't want to bite the fucking head off of the next one who looks at him like he's going to make the earth shake and rocks fall on all of them.

He's not Terra. 

That much he's told them. First to the whole team, when Slade had-- disappeared, left him behind on top of-- all the rest Jason was just discovering, all these years Slade had lied to him about his father's death. Later, again to Gar. That had ended with Starfire and Cyborg separating them and Nightwing scolding them. Like Jason was a little kid who'd been caught stealing from the cookie jar. Fuck Nightwing, anyway. 

The Titans treat him like he's a traitor or a time bomb waiting to explode. They don't trust him and they hate that he loves to fight, he can see it on Nightwing's face. Starfire loves to fight exactly the same way he does, she loves pummeling a bad guy and make him hurt like he deserves, but she doesn't get the sociopath treatment. Wonder Girl is a warrior and acts like a warrior against HIVE and their minions, but no-one would call that a stain on her character.

They should get it; Gar and Nightwing should get at least that much. They love doing things with their bodies, inhabiting their bodies, and they refuse Jason the same right. 

He can't explain, not without getting into too many details about how Deathstroke's changed his body, made it into something better. Without Slade's enhancements, Jason would never be as fast as Nightwing or resilient enough to try to keep up with Wonder Girl. And the Titans' opinion on what Deathstroke “did to him” has been all too clear the few times the issue came up. They never seem to view Cyborg's body with the same distaste, but whatever. 

The heart of the matter is, they're slow to trust a guy who's been trying to maim or kill them for a while now. It's not stupid. He's admitted to Arsenal, who comes by sometimes and keeps him from committing mass murder on his teammates, that it frustrates him but he can respect that.

He already respected them before he switched sides.

“You could do worse than the Titans by a long shot, kid,” Deathstroke once told him, one evening of sentimentality.

Jason had looked at him, wondering if he'd lost his mind. It was the anniversary of Jericho's death; that wouldn't have been too much of a shock.

But Slade had smiled, sharp and dangerous like a blade. “Ravager. If you can't beat them, join them,” he'd reminded Jason, a lesson repeated too often to be casually dismissed.

Later, amidst the Titans Jason wonders: was that Slade's blessing, or an order he was giving?


End file.
